Gracepointe Church (Dover, OH)
Gracepointe Church (Dover, OH)
From Awe to Action | Shawn Miller
Life is a game of the witness. What do our bears live? Less than two to five years, but never leave. They are both CTOs of vast organizations with overlapping jurisdictions. They communicate extensively and work in perfect coordination. One would perish without the other. One specializes in intellectual pursuits all day, while the other calls for iron. These two allies were pairless with one another and were never taken into consideration. Or did they all? Even the slightest interruption of their railroads would be catastrophic. So they never sleep. They're both exactly the same age and they're in the same territory and never rest. They're combined efforts to keep us alive and well.
Speaker 1:Heart and brain and mind. I think they lose that, that we will have a lost heart in some way. It applies to a certain extent. Part and the title of the sermon this morning is From Awe to Passion, from being in a state of awe to coming to a state of passion. The heart and the brain, these both system that we call the nervous system, so our whole body, and then our circular system, the system that brings our life and the blood that we are drinking, from before birth until the moment we die. These two organisms are on the job, on the person.
Speaker 1:Tom Hodges has 29 good books, one of the greatest of all time. The Last Highlight, and I think it was from the 1960s the New Orleans. On one and one occasion Coach Lafayette said that he's come across many good athletes but very few times has he come across great athletes. He said the difference between good athletes and great athletes was he was. Now many athletes are all. Many athletes are six foot or all. This he answers to the commandment that he would allow himself to go to the meeting with the other two. He explained that good math is that it accepts from a body and in thorough understanding of the game. But great athletes have heart and the passion of the play that drives them to selfless sacrifice, to brutally long hours of practice, to undivided focus on their music and ultimately drives them to achieve extraordinary results. This is the difference between living out of our head and living out of our mind.
Speaker 1:What I want to do is sort of describe what inspiring is to start with. So lately I've found myself just going through life mind. We had some house insurance to work through, I had my situation and I know I feel bad, but all the other people I know that was one of the hardest things I ever had. It was extremely difficult to see Kobe or take Kobe out of college, and I can still see him standing on those dorms as we drove away. He was in the very near end of the bus. He was one of my boys that was going to see me moving his arm. I never know what he's, what he's doing. That was extremely difficult and it was a very difficult moment for me to take our little dog away and leave her in a critical condition, but I could feel the protective mode of that. I didn't get that. So, having the phone for the last couple weeks, I was really lucky with this Lifting out of water.
Speaker 1:When we fight our fo, how can we be healthy? How can we be healthy? How can we be healthy? How can we be healthy? How can we be healthy? How can we be healthy? How can we be healthy? How can we be healthy? How can we be healthy? How can we be healthy?
Speaker 1:Some of us are all hell-bent. We know the facts. We know the facts. We know the facts. I've heard from the dire spirits. I've heard from the dire spirits. I know that some of us, I know that some of us are. We are where we go to the next, where we go to the next we could feel it where we go to the next spiritual life, where we go to the next moment of inspiration. So how can we get in the heart, how can we experience that real transformative living when I am in the heart of the devil, when truth grips the mind and truth slurs the mind? How can we do that? He's saying he's wanting to ask you this says he wants to be loved. I like where this is going in the context From or to us, where this scripture was written, for what Isaiah was facing when he read this or wrote this scripture.
Speaker 1:Isaiah's call comes from a time of great unrest and misery. The nation is struggling politically, the nation is struggling spiritually. Their leaders are failing, their people are turning away from God and the threat continues all the way to the grave. The king died and the rest died. The people's faith in us, in God, is a way to idolatry and injustice and to become a holy being. It's in this atmosphere of communion that we find that Isaiah encounters the Lord in a way that changes everything Before Isaiah when he said as God's God, god revealed his name as a witness and his glory to all.
Speaker 1:How can I experience what Isaiah did In order to hold, live out my calling that God was placed on my life. I can't do that. How can I reap out of going through the motions to actually living out what I've been through? I can't do that. I can't do that. I'm just going to do that as well, to actually living our actual life.
Speaker 1:This morning you guys saw a few stories, so the first one is turning the Bible to Isaiah 6, and I'd like to read verses 1 through 8. If you can, please stand up for the people of the world. One, two, three. We can't understand what it means to be a believer. Isaiah 6, verse 1.
Speaker 1:In the year that he died alive, I saw the Lord sit in the in Rome, high on the top, and a friend of his will, Pope Temple. Above him stood a seraphim. Each had six wings, with two on his face and with two on his feet, and with two he flew, and one called to the Lord and said Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory and the foundations of the thresholds show that the Lord is with all and the house is filled with His glory. And I said woe is me, for I am lost, for I am in man and I am in this, and I dwell in the midst of the people of unclean lips, for thy eyes have seen me, the Lord of hosts. Then one of the servants through me, having asked me to bring it home that he had given it to me, that he had given it to me, and he touched my mouth and said Behold, this has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away and your sin is gone. And I heard the voice of the Lord say Whom shall I send and who will go with us? Then I said here I am sending you to the and you will see.
Speaker 1:This morning I would like to share with you three points that, if any of you have been going through what I have experienced the last 10 weeks, I trust that any of these three points can help you rebound back to where you want to be. The first point is simply be bold, be bold, be bold with God's words. I'd like to go back and look at it. Here's my lesson. So, first of all, he saw the Lord. It specifically says the Lord. He saw the Lord sitting on his throne, high and lifted up. By the way, joe Perry, the out-and-out, gave an excellent tribute to my service and at the end of this poem I was hesitating, but I think we're going to record that song. I had it in my notes and we are going to sing that song, so I think we're going to record that song.
Speaker 1:Isaiah 4, sitting on a throne high and lifted up His strain of his throne, filled the temple. Now, all of us have been to weddings where the church houses were very large. I'm not sure exactly how large the temple was in Jerusalem or how large the temple was at this place in Jerusalem, but if I think of the train of his growth in Jerusalem, can you imagine, even in this little building? Can you imagine walking into this building and somebody would have been standing up there with a gown and the whole place would have been filled with just the? There was continual worship. The seraphim were. I like to think they were singing, but it says, I think it says.
Speaker 1:It says he the angel. Was it the seraphim or was it the Lord? It doesn't specify, but when the voice spoke, the foundation of the living was there. I spoke, the combinations of the living and the un-spoiled. We've been through this type of knowledge loss where we have to question our beliefs and beliefs of others, and where we can connect to the combination of the living and the un-spoiled, the combination of the living and the un-spoiled, and I would add that the un-s that we are in this day and age, we are a community of beings. In today's world, when everything we've got going on is so easy, we can all be beings in our own way. When everything we've got going on works, it is so easy to lose all of your fears. It is so easy to lose the hard work of God's grace. Remember how I asked you that day at the first Turn to God.
Speaker 1:Let's do Isaiah 1. And if you choose not to live by the word of the Lord but I have listened and I have read this scripture. It's a little bit of a lengthy scripture, but I'm going to ask you to study it I'm going to read it to you. Isaiah 1, beginning in verse 9. And this is let's keep in mind that Isaiah wrote this after he experienced the death of Jesus. Isaiah 40, verse 9.
Speaker 1:Go up to the mountain, go up to the high mountain of Zion. Hear all the good news, lift up your voice with strength. O Jerusalem, hear all the good news. Lift it up. Hear now Sing to the cities of Judah. Behold your God, behold the Lord. God comes with a plan and his arm rules for him. Behold, if your Lord is with him and his record has been pointed, he will tend his flock like a shepherd, he will gather the lambs, the hollow of his hand. That's right here. God has made a hand, he has measured the waters in his hand and marked off the heavens with a span. A span is from the given degree, to the given level, as Spanish, from the hill of the deep, the hill of the valley, and closed, their gusts like dirt being measured and waved. The mountains in scales and the hills in valleys. Who has measured the spirit of the Lord or what man shows in his counsel? Whom did he consult? And he knew the man's name who taught him the path of justice and taught him how to, and showed him the way of his engine before the nations are like his.
Speaker 1:God in the subject the morning. When I brought you the story of my life, I think I was in the 21st century of God. Not in the subject, in the morning when I go out and do the chores or whatever I do, the chores in the 21st century as well, not in the tools, but we often pick a bucket full of water and go to the bottom of the bucket or whatever. When I come back in, I usually set the set, the pill down and don't even think about it. I don't look glass. I don't look glass and I would have it as a dust on the scales. I think from now on, maybe, when I weigh myself, maybe I'll dust it off. I'll just be a tree that has been here. I'm not going to take them off next time. They are counted as dust, as the dust of the sea.
Speaker 1:Behold, he gives up the coastlands like a dust. Lebanon will not suffice for a fool, nor are the beasts enough for your daughter. All the nations are nothing before them. To whom, then, will he like a god or what likeness can carry him? An idol? A grassman casts it and bolts that will raise him to gold and casts it forth. So much aims he who is true to the promise for our Lord Jesus would. That will not lie. He seeks out his soul to cast it to set up the idol that will not go. You do not know, you do not hear. He seeks out his stork and asks him to set up an idol at the top of the moon. You do not know, you do not hear, as it not be for you to understand, and not on his miracle, but on worship to the earth.
Speaker 1:It is he who sits above the circle of the earth and enter cabinets around grasshoppers, who sets about the heavens like a curtain and spreads them like a tent. Well up, he brings princes to Bethel and makes the ruins of the earth as tempest. Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sold, scarcely has their stem been put in the earth. When he blows on them, they wither and the tempest carries them off like stumbling the human head. When you prepare me that I should be like him, says the Holy One, lift up your eyes, o I, and see who brings these things.
Speaker 1:He who brings out their hosts by number, all in number, by name, by the greatness of his might and because of his strong power, not by his wisdom. Why do you say O Jacob, and speak, o Israel? My way is here from the Lord and my right is in the other, by my God. Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the heavens and the earth. He does not take the world with him. His understanding is uncertain. He gives power to the thing and in him, who has no mind, he increases strength. Neither do you. This is only a faith between the earth and the earth, but they who believe in the Lord shall be their strength. They shall not walk with wings like the angels. They shall run and not be afraid. They shall walk and not be afraid. They shall run and not be afraid. They shall walk and not be afraid. And I know that they will bring this on them and I know that they will bring this on them, and I know that they will bring this on them and I know that they will bring this on them and I know that they will bring this on them and I know that they will bring this on them and I know that they will bring this on them and I know that they will bring this on them. And when you finish, you wake up right now, and you're going to experience his love in a personal way.
Speaker 1:God, let's talk about this. This is the same God that just woke up in Isaiah. So we have come, we know and we believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever dies in love has died in God, and God has made him this great. God has such a love for us as we do. Yes, that is such an unbearable process to do in the midst of a new day. Folks, this morning, beholding the goodness of God shows you the best of all. You should be walking in that Before you can serve God directly. If I want to be more than just a good person, I can just live life. I need to encounter that with all these graces. Behold the art of this, the art of this and the great and great situation that we have for each one of us.
Speaker 1:Daniel, is it possible that you, in other ways than a stand? That's all standing, I think. If you want to put it on the stand again, I know there's a lot of stuff that we've worked on before. It's such a long song you'll really miss it, but that's all standing. Alright, this is not boring. We'll have to do that every time you fly the plane. So many of you can't go out and do that. Go over to the shoulder. I don't remember that one. I think that one was a smaller one. That was a sound man. It was a big one. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Every grain of sin, kings and nations tremble at his voice, all creation rises to rejoice. Who has given counsel to the Lord, who can question any of His words, who can teach someone who knows all things, who can fathom all His wondrous deeds? Behold our God seated on His throne. Come, let us adore him. Behold our King. Nothing can compare. Come, let us adore him, him who has held the nails upon his head Bearing all the guilt of sinful man. God, eternal, humble to the grave. Jesus, savior, risen now to reign Our God seated on His throne. Come, let us adore Him. Behold our King. Nothing can compare. Come, let us adore him. You will reign forever. You will reign forever. You will reign forever. You will reign forever. You will reign forever. Behold our God Seated on His throne. Come, let us adore Him. Behold our King. Nothing can compare. Come, let us adore him. Behold our God seated on his throne. Come, let us adore him. Behold our King, him. Behold our king. Nothing can compare. Come, let us adore him.
Speaker 1:So what I want is that you feel God's grace. What I do is I ask, is I say, I speak and I said woe is me, for I have lost, for I am a man of my own lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of my own lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts, the last few weeks. I can't stand up here and say that I was lost spiritually or that I was backsliding or that I was falling away from God, but I was lost in my own life. I was lost in everything that was just going on. It's impressive, and when we truly behold God's greatness, it makes us realize how small and unholy we are. God's greatness and God's holiness exposes our sin, exposes our unwellness, exposes our holiness, just like Isaiah. Just like Isaiah, we are in the Bible. We are in the Bible. We are in the Bible. We are invited to come to the world and we are invited to come to the world.
Speaker 1:I am lost in my own thinking. I'm getting into my own head. I'm getting into more enjoyment out of this. Whatever it might be, god will provide. We are invited to pass our witness and pass this grace. This is our way. The knowledge that can be passed through us starts with a transfer, us igniting. That starts with a principle. I'll say the ninth one starts with a principle. Again, I'm afraid, I'm afraid, I'm afraid, I'm afraid, I'm afraid. As I study this different confession, I'm like I have to be sick of that too, as I study this different confession that I might have had after this similar passion that I had, and I would like to take the felony fees and just try to help God for the rest of his life.
Speaker 1:I agree with some of the other people. I understand how it works. Have mercy on me, o God, and I want you to accept that song. According to your love and mercy, walk out of my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin, for I know my transgressions and I sin in every way Against you. You own how I sinned and done misguided in your sight, so that you may justify their words. And let us know who you are.
Speaker 1:I was brought forth to be a sinner and not a holy spirit. Behold, you're inviting truth into your being. You're inviting truth into your being, and when you teach to the earth, you're going to seek your truth running through the inner room and when he keeps you visible in a secret garden. Purge me with his love and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be white as stone. Let me hear the joy of the lepers. Let the bones that you have broken be closed. I fear the face of my sins and the lot of all my enemies. Create in me a kingdom of God and renew the spirit of the kingdom, casting out away from your presence, and take back the Holy Spirit of heaven. Restore the peace, the joy and the transformation of our home where we live in the Spirit of the King. Amen.
Speaker 1:Confession needs to be settled, not shame. Confession needs to be settled, not shame. I believe that when we find confession, we bring shame on ourselves because of whatever that had been. Maybe it was our own friend, maybe it was something we read somewhere years ago, maybe it was something that we experienced in a previous confession where we felt a condemnation. Those who confess should be celebrated, not true. Confession isn't about condemnation. Should be celebrated, not destroyed. Confession isn't about condemnation. Confession is about the restoration. Keep that in mind. Confession is not about condemnation. Confession is always about the restoration. This is the glory of he put up about confession. The truth we hide in pieces and chains. The truth we confess sets us free.
Speaker 1:This one is, if there's anyone here, that it might not be a gross sin or it might not be something specific that you're suffering with. It might be just finding yourself like I have building your emotions and knowing that this is living out of your head. You're on all of that Because it's really not a good thing, and I will pass on that. If you find yourself in this situation, search your it and just come to God and ask Lord, I am undone, verse 6. And one of us said Luke having in his hand a burning coal and having a table of plums from the altar. Recently and I can't really explain why I enjoy it so much, but recently I enjoyed I watched a few videos on the art of philosophy and the question that you do here is are you part of the last movement? And you're really best at it Pulling that lava the morning, which looks like lava, out of the fire, putting it into a form, pressing it, and all of a sudden running through, all of sudden he has this crystal clear glass letter coming, the transforming power of the Christ, the transforming power of this.
Speaker 1:If it exists, it comes. This is, you know. It reminds me of what I did with the other day in my life. We bring the whole that we have taken our thoughts from the altar and we touch our hearts and say this is such a risk your guilt is taking away from you. In other words, the best way to fight your greatest sin is to remind us that when God gives whatever we're asking for, your guilt is gone. Satan tries to bring that back and convinces that because of something you confess that you still carry guilt. That guilt is gone. So plan that when you come into the afterlife. Plan that you specifically told that your role is, in a way. And you said I heard the voice of the Lord say part of what I was about to say he's fallen. He's fallen. And I heard the voice of the Lord say who shall I send and who will go for us? And I said here I am, send me. He's fallen, he's truly coming with. God Moves us, moves us all in adoration and confession, into action. Confession opens our spiritual ears, enabling us to recognize that God speaks.
Speaker 1:You don't have to turn back to Psalm 81, but I do turn back to Psalm 81 and now take up over that. We stop at verse 12, when David was saying Restore me, join your souls and uphold me with the word of the Spirit. Now I come to verse 13 and 17. Look at what happens when David confesses sin and asks for a renewed spirit. This is, then what David said. Then I will keep transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you delivering from the blood of the wilderness of God. O God, my salvation and my humble sin. Allow me your righteousness, o Lord. Open my lips and my sin. Allow me righteousness, o Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise, for you will not delight in sacrifice or in giving. You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, broken and ungrateful for God, who will not despise After being the king of the flesh. And he requested that God renew his heart. He said, oh, that I will do it, and that's what he did. David was very nice to him and our heart has been renewed with God's word, and and it's always good that we can give to God, and that's what God is doing for us. And then the last part for you.
Speaker 1:I swear I missed many opportunities that I didn't have in my life. I was caught up in my own. Just like I said that when we be pulled and standing off, which brings us on our knees, and we feel and we respond to this call as we have from His power this morning, I encourage all of us to be first responders for God. At work. We have about five first responders from different area fire departments and we are so blessed to have them and I'm always so pleased to see them how they appear that way when their papers go, boom out the door, except that there's a stage back there. I didn't notice that one day. But when their papers go, they are the first responders. They want to be the first one to listen. They're gone. I thought that was something that you could imagine. Be a first responder as Isaiah goes. Be a first responder in this preparation. All Bible-ers, my commanding glasses. They are commanding glasses. They are prepared. You don't see them quickly searching for their tools or running here and there to the throat or quickly grab some moving one of those. They are prepared.
Speaker 1:I'm honest, am I bred up? Am I bred up when God guides me In your food? Isaiah saw God. He was awed by his greatness and his confession was transcribed by his grace. He didn't stay silent. He said here I am, send me. His only question was not where did I get this from? His only question was am I in the right place?
Speaker 1:The challenge was the challenge that I really request all of us is in the early years. Is this the old God's grace? The challenge that I believe, with Christ, all of us is given in this very year is this we hold God's greatness, staying alive. God brings the marvel of His greatness. We hold God's greatness and confess our need for God's grace we all do it and then, lastly, respond with a good heart and grace and love all of us. If you find yourself in that swamp that I brought myself in, I hope you see me in the midst of it, and I hope you see me in the midst of it, and I hope you see me in the midst of it. I love you, god. I believe that we can hold on to that promise.
Speaker 1:I thought that was really important. I thought that was really important. I prayed to my friend Francis. I prayed to my friend Francis, who just took me to a hospital. He was in a hospital. He was in a hospital. He was in a hospital. I know he's still there. I know he's still there, thank you.